| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: station."
The words were like a cry for help, frozen on to the ugly paper.
Amster shivered; he had a feeling that this was a matter of life
and death.
The wagon tracks in the lonely street, the broken pieces of glass
and the drops of blood, showing that some occupant of the vehicle
had broken the window, in the hope of escape, perhaps, or to throw
out the package which should bring assistance - all these facts
grouped themselves together in the brain of the intelligent
working-man to form some terrible tragedy where his assistance, if
given at once, might be of great use. He had a warm heart besides,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: found an honest pretence for a visit to the astronomer, for she
would solicit permission to continue under him the studies in which
she had been initiated by the Arab, and the Princess might go with
her, either as a fellow-student, or because a woman could not
decently come alone. "I am afraid," said Imlac, "that he will soon
be weary of your company. Men advanced far in knowledge do not
love to repeat the elements of their art, and I am not certain that
even of the elements, as he will deliver them, connected with
inferences and mingled with reflections, you are a very capable
auditress." "That," said Pekuah, "must be my care. I ask of you
only to take me thither. My knowledge is perhaps more than you
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Critias by Plato: ancient metropolis, making a road to and from the royal palace. And at the
very beginning they built the palace in the habitation of the god and of
their ancestors, which they continued to ornament in successive
generations, every king surpassing the one who went before him to the
utmost of his power, until they made the building a marvel to behold for
size and for beauty. And beginning from the sea they bored a canal of
three hundred feet in width and one hundred feet in depth and fifty stadia
in length, which they carried through to the outermost zone, making a
passage from the sea up to this, which became a harbour, and leaving an
opening sufficient to enable the largest vessels to find ingress.
Moreover, they divided at the bridges the zones of land which parted the
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from The Last War: A World Set Free by H. G. Wells: though every seventeen days its power is halved, though
constantly it diminishes towards the imperceptible, is never
entirely exhausted, and to this day the battle-fields and bomb
fields of that frantic time in human history are sprinkled with
radiant matter, and so centres of inconvenient rays.
What happened when the celluloid stud was opened was that the
inducive oxidised and became active. Then the surface of the
Carolinum began to degenerate. This degeneration passed only
slowly into the substance of the bomb. A moment or so after its
explosion began it was still mainly an inert sphere exploding
superficially, a big, inanimate nucleus wrapped in flame and
The Last War: A World Set Free |
